With increased popularity of a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material (hereinafter referred to as a photographic light-sensitive material or simply a light-sensitive material), there have been a strong demand for improved stability of unexposed light-sensitive material stored over a long period of time, improved handling of said light-sensitive material and improved productivity of said light-sensitive material.
In the case of photographic color paper, it is used mainly in photographic laboratories and photographic shops, and is preferably refrigerated prior to use after manufacture so as to keep its photographic properties. However, it is sometimes actually left for a long time without refrigeration in transporting it and also in the photographic laboratoies and the photographic shops where it is employed. Further, in certain regions, the paper is often left for a long time under conditions of high temperature and/or high humidity. When an unexposed photographic color paper is left for a long time as mentioned above, fogging occasionally results on the print, therefore improvement to minimize said fogging has been strongly desired.
When the unexposed photographic color paper is transferred at high speed in a printer, it is occasionally subjected to excessive scratch. In order to improve the scratch resistance, various methods have been proposed, however these methods have been insufficient improvement and still more improved methods have been sought.
In manufacturing these photographic materials, in order to obtain desirable photographic layer properties, these photographic materials are occasionally stored in the manufacturing plant for a few days prior to transportation of them after being coated. However, if the photographic material is capable of being hardened rapidly, it can be immediately transported just after coating resulting in enhancement of its productivity.
Further, an image obtained by processing the photographic material is often stored under various conditions. Specifically, in the case of photographic color paper, the obtained image is required to remain unchanged for a long time. However, since the image of the photographic color paper is often left under conditions of high temperature and/or high humidity, the image resolution is occasionally lowered, and improvement of the current image resolution has been desired.
On the other hand, in recent years, rapid development processing of the photographic light-sensitive material has become more and more popular. In this case, specifically photographic color paper is transferred at high speed when processed in a processing solution, occasionally resulting in scratch of the photographic color paper. Therefore, improvement of the scratch resistance of the paper has been strongly sought. Further, in point of rapid process, a light-sensitive material with more excellent dye forming efficiency and a processing method of said light-sensitive material have been also strongly sought.